Category Archives: Editorials

Wow it’s really fucking (cw: peanut allergy) n*ts that we’re at the point where we’re even writing this. When (cw: male comedian) M*tt, our head writer, came to us with this idea you better believe that we both said (cw: Satanism) “oh h*ll no” right out of the gate.

For real though, what college publication in their right mind would decide to do something like this? We all saw what happened when the Chronicle published that editorial a few weeks back. The only difference is that we’re not trying to say something terrible and if you’ll read closely enough, you’ll pick up on the several hand-crafted layers of irony that we’ve attempted to lacquer this entire issue in. As it turns out, it seems like we’ve done a fairly good job of talking about this without really saying anything at all, which is the best we could hope for, right? (For the record, this is a satirical magazine, please read our disclaimer, if you think we are serious then you are very ill-informed). That kind of sucks but trust me, nobody wants to read an issue full of our hot opinions (not even any of us!) which are, for the record, what you could call significantly left of center. Remember the time we got yelled at in the student center for “““censoring Republican voices””” because one time this crazy Yung Rep came to a Nonsense meeting and told everyone that guns turn him on and we thought he was really fucking weird? (That actually happened!!!) That’s, the liberal media for you, am I right fellas? Hyuk hyuk. Anyways, we digress…

If there was ever a point to this, the original idea was to make fun of how crazy things would get if the kind of people who exaggerate the ideas behind political correctness—the kind of person who would label us as “millennial crybabies” or share political cartoons on Facebook of college students in diapers—were right in all their outlandish doom and gloom. Ultimately, we ended up doing what we usually do and letting the theme kind of carry itself out, but there are a few traces of that original idea floating around. Now it seems to be us writing this issue as people who have—to a very stupid, outrageous degree—next to no idea of what any of being “politically correct” is about, or who have picked up the rhetoric of being “PC” or being “anti-PC” in order to make an incredibly stupid point. To some degree, this feels to be an accurate, albeit exaggerated, portrayal of what it’s like writing something like this and seeing the way that people around you view this sort of thing. We poke some fun at certain things, while maybe making a point here or there. We started off this year by asking in the Hofstra Issue editorial if you could just laugh with us laughing at you for once, and now I guess we’re asking you to, collectively, laugh with us at all of us, or something like that?

On a more serious note, this year Nonsense has managed to accomplish more than we could have ever hoped. We had a very large influx of new members, we found an incredible person and artist to help us with the designs of our magazine (which you can see are really spectacular), we got into disputes with OSLE right out the gate and won them, we printed this magazine on paper for the first time in 4 years, we started a website that has garnered almost 12,000 views, we went on to print two more physical issues as well as produce two digital ones, we attended a national conference for college humor magazines where we met writers from The Onion and ClickHole, we put together a publication collaboration with Hofstra English Society’s Font, and we won the fucking “Best Media Organization of the Year” award from Hofstra for literally making fun of this place so much. The last issue of Nonsense to be printed before this school year (all the way back in 2012) was called “Is Nonsense Dead?” and now we’re coming out of this school year having done a complete and total turn around. We are not dead, and you can fucking expect to hear more of us as soon as literally possible.

Shouts out to Denise and Karl at OSLE, as well as Professor Karofsky and our new lawyer Stuart “First Amendment” Rabinowitz for making all of this possible for a shitrag of millennial whiners. Also, speaking of millennial whiners, we could not have done any of this without our incredible staff of insane fucking people. We may not have gotten our class work in on time, but we, idk, produced something special or some sentimental shit like that.Kiss our collective ass Hofstra,

Hi everyone welcome to this issue of Nonsense Humor. I’m sure you’re just as thrilled to be reading this as much as you usually are. Thanks again for supporting us and thinking we are so funny and good. And beautiful.

Anyway we wrote this issue specifically with the thought in mind that one day, a real life child would read it. With that being said, you should not, under any circumstances, show this to a child. We’ve taken the liberty of splitting up this editorial into 2 sections; one rated “G” for “Gchildren,” and one rated R for “Rad-ults”. This way, the kids still get something to read, and it’s fun for the whole family. Liike the naughty jokes in Fairly Odd Parents, or a Friendly’s that also serves beer.

Okay so here’s the one for you kiddies! (If you’re reading this KidzBop, give us a call!)

(Drum n bass intro)

(Verse 1)My name is Snuffy and I’m here to sayDrugs are bad in a really big way!Don’t do drugs because if you do,Jesus will come after you.

(Verse 2)Ayyyy!My name is Jesus and i’m here to say,I just rose up on Easter Sunday!I had enough strength to break out of my tomb,So I better not find any weed in your room!

(Chorus)Stay in school! Keep your body safe!You’ve got nothing to lose if you just play sports!Ride a bike! Swim in a lake!Do anything besides things that are bad!Hofstra Summer Camp: Enroll now!Christ….out!

(Record scratch)

Okay, so now that we’ve got that shit out of the way, you kids can fuck off now. We’re serious. If you read the mommy and daddy section of the editorial, I swear to god we’ll find out.

Now for the boring grown-up shit. Nonsense is pretty much the same as it ever was, and by that we mean we are still suffering the slings and arrows of misfortune directed at us by the bureaucratic mess that is Hofstra’s administration. This time we deadass got censored by Res Life for “promoting a culture of negative self-esteem in the dorms” That’s hilarious, because there is no culture in the dorms, unless you count the ones growing on all the gross ass food that Matt leaves sitting out in his little rat’s nest of a bed area. Unbelievable. But yeah we got censored and that is some bullshit but it’s okay because my RA just got fired, lmao R.I.P. Jaymie. At least she was always good to us.

But, hey, the good news is we’re printing this out on paper! The Chronicle might have told you in its club spotlight about us that we want your jokes, but we like to think we’ve done a pretty good job on our own. We’ve managed to include some cute little popsicle stick jokes on each spread and because we don’t need to bore you with more long, drawn-out articles, we’ve even got some games in this one. Zach also tried out their hand at drawing some portraits of us after the wonderful job that Heather did last time (let’s see if they compare!). If that shit isn’t enough, we’re even handing out 250-some complimentary packs of crayons with this issue. Our students are just so creative!

Moral of the story? Fuck, I don’t know. Don’t do drugs and then maybe end up with a real major, doing real things instead of writing for a college humor magazine? Also if you write for the Odyssey Online get a real internship because I’m tired of seeing everyone’s wrong and bad opinions online. Jesus.

Welcome to “A Very Special Issue of Nonsense” and thank you for reading. As you can see, we’ve come out with a new issue in a timely manner because we are in the midst of a Nonsense renaissance, or a “Renonaissance” if you will (and we do).

Last semester was fairly productive for us, and after the semi-success that we had with both the Hofstra Issue and re-launching our formerly decrepit website, we’ve decided to do a bit of reflection.

I guess you could say that this issue kind of serves as both a declaration of “our revival!!” (the Renonaissance) and a look at Hofstra in a different light. As it is, it can often seem pretty medieval. You may say “but wait, isn’t it 2016? We can vape now!” but the fact is there’s still plenty of overlap with the past. For example, the archaic behavior of “men’s rights activists,” the hastily prepared Meat Stews Etc which flow like a bountiful shit river through the Studente Centre Café, and censorship at the hand of our student leadership organization who rule over Nonsense by hand and sword from the top of their ivory office (just kidding we love you guys!!!!)

But enough about that. We’ve written 16 pages of content to tell you about our interpretation of the past! However, since we’re all millennials attending college in this oh-so-overly sensitive age, the fact is we don’t know a damn thing about history. Not even a little bit. So we’ve tried our best to imagine what Hofstra might have been like in ye olde times. We’ve taken the liberty of chronicling Hofstra’s history as accurately as we could, which you can see for yourself on the next page.

Thankfully, we’ve also managed to give you our rendition of renaissance/medieval art (they’re all just the same thing right??) Are we still allowed to say “Dark Ages” or do you want us to be all “P.C.” about it? Oh, excuse us. “Miiiiiddle Aaaaaages.” I feel like we’re in the Dark Ages right now, you know? It’s like my dad says whenever he starts drinking again. Doesn’t anyone remember when music had real lyrics, and everyone was a wholesome Boy or Girl Scout? When every kid had a paper route, and the only “App” we had was “App-lying One’s Self To A Respectable And Ambitious Task, As Is App-ropriate For Youth Of Some Standing?” Now we have, shit, I don’t know, socialism and all-ages bathrooms. R.I.P music and culture 1910-2011 what happened.

Anyways, where the fuck were we going with this? This was gonna be a poem at some point but, I mean, I guess if you really think about it nobody really knows how to read those things anyways, and I feel like most people at Hofstra have a hard time with reading comprehension as is, so we’ll keep it simple:

There Once was a Manne from Long IslandHe never made Jokes, and was SilentBut Thenne, one Fatefull dayHe read our magazine GayAnd then he was happy and smilin.

Hello. Thank you for reading this (possibly even in real, physical, paper form). You have no fucking idea how hard it was to make that happen… but at the same time, so easy. So fucking easy. And that’s kind of the point of why we did it.

It’s really easy to opt out and do Hofstra jokes—about the food (ABP during lunch time, am I right, guys?), the sprinklers, the fucking bureaucracy, and, while you’re at it, beat Stuart Rabinowitz jokes literally to DEATH. We even included (if we remember to by time of print) a counter on each page of all the StuRab jokes we made. We are so tired of hearing that name that we might even take a break from shitting on that guy for a while. (None of us have ever even met that man, by the way, unless you count the time that Matt saw him naked in the locker room.) The fact that so many freshman jumped right in and wrote these things about Hofstra with pretty much no context really says something quite clear about this institution of higher learning. To be honest, any print organization at this school could have done this, and I think the Chron actually came pretty close (although it takes a very dry sense of humor to recognize that).

Mostly, however, the reason why we did this was to give the student body a gift. The only gift that we have to offer—laughter. We laugh because we’re bitter, we laugh because it makes some of the actually troubling facts about this place digestible in some way (and we’re not just talking about the food—zing!!!).
We still adhere to the theory that Hofstra is one of the many places on this earth where the walls between Universes are very thin. Hopefully by reading this you will see just a fraction of the batshit crazy place that we all perceive Hofstra as. Pretty much everyone who goes here has thought (fantasized?) about transferring at some point or another–a thought that was swiftly popped by the realization that your credits will never mean shit anywhere else. Maybe we can start to move past all this by learning to laugh together, for once. Wouldn’t you all be having so much more fun if you were laughing with us laughing at you instead of us just laughing at you?

This is probably the part where we should talk about how happy we are at all the new freshman that joined this club, and how we’re headed toward a new beginning, and all that shit. But the fact is if you read through the past howevermany editorials of this club you’ll find similiar sentiments, so I think this time it’s good that we let the content and the list of contributors in the Table of Contents speak for themselves. What we will say though is this: this club has gone through a lot of shit over the past few years (and let’s not pretend there won’t be more ahead of us) but we’re still fucking here, Hofstra, and we’re still making jokes about Stuart Rabinowitz’s foreskin.

So if you are one of the lucky few to be holding this issue in your hands on some paper and ink and staples (the first time this club has printed a full issue since 2012, by the way), you are complicit in our victory in a 2-year-long war between us, SGA, and our own misconceptions. The support that this club has received from SGA this semester has surprised all of us, most of all, because frankly, for a period of time we didn’t believe that SGA or OSLE were actual human beings. Long story short, our old treasurer screwed us, we blamed SGA, they screwed us (if you had a nickel for each time you’ve probably heard us bitch about losing our office, you’d probably have enough to afford one Pantone square), we cried, wrote an issue about it (which you can read online), and then we bounced back after taking a series of Ls. This semester started with us being called down to OSLE’s office to talk about some “problematic content” we put up on the Facebook page (which you can see on this page) (Hofstra’s Only Intentional Self-Hating Queer Magazine!) Really considering how the past few years went, it didn’t seem like anything new. We thought we were going to get in trouble, we thought “well the office is gone, the budget is gone, we have no reputation, so the only thing left I guess is to just put us out of our misery”. But, in a strange twist of fate (considering this happened while Mercury WAS in retrograde) we left that meeting with a plan. Our Masterplan™.

Shouts out to Karl Koeppel, Chad “Remington” Chad-Remington, and Denise—three people firmly responsible for helping us to save this godforsaken magazine.
Oh, and SGA who has not stopped e-mailing us about trying to meet with them (but this time it’s actually under favorable circumstances, and, hey, maybe we might GET an office out of this eventually—poetic irony is in, guys!) And of course we’d like to thank the staff who really have all done an excellent job with this issue. Special thanks to freshman Gillian Pitzer who has really been doing an incredible job with the layouts.

Thanks for reading this, and may luck flow for you as fleetingly as the stream of a Hofstra Sprinkler,

In your fantasy, dream about us, and all that we can do with this emotion.

Wow, hello, I can’t believe I’m saying this again but, welcome to this issue of Nonsense Humor Magazine. After all of the run-ins with SGA and the entire student body’s continued apathy/lack of support/general disgust towards us I thought somebody would have just brought us out back like a group of old dogs and put us out of our misery by now. But, here I am, writing my last editorial for this magazine that has put me through the most uh… interesting past 4 years of my life.

I honestly never thought that I’d get to write another editorial for this magazine again. I really thought that every single person on the staff would leave me cold and alone in the back of the student center while I waited for OSLA to finally pull the plug on the whole operation. I assumed that as soon as someone found out I (allegedly) was responsible for getting a teenage boy to have sex with a jar of marshmallow fluff and shotgun a four loko (separate events (both for research)) they’d lock me up in Hofstra jail (ABP during lunch time, am i right guys?? lmao). At any rate, we are still safe (for now) and ready to begin a whole new year of bad photoshops, SGA hearings, drastic staff changes, and public safety brief shout outs. And hey, aren’t you guys lucky?? You’ve decided to give us a chance and check out this very special “green” issue.

Now, when I say “green” issue, I’m not talkin’ environmentally friendly. I’m talkin’ greeeeen. That green stuff, that good good, those dollar bills, etc. Green makes Hofstra and the rest of the world go round! So, we over here at Nonsense Humor took on the task of getting down to the root of all things green.

I am delighted to inform you all that the future of this magazine is looking bright. This new 2015-2016 staff is now being led by TWO Nonsense all-stars, Heather Levinsky, and Zach Johnson. Two people who I firmly believe will help this publication gain the respect it deserves from this university and lift the curse that rests upon us. We’ve also got a new design director in charge of making all of these [issue] pages look good, freshman Gill Pitzer, who has already proved themselves to be very good at their job. This staff is more well organized than a Nonsense staff has been in a long time and I couldn’t be any more proud of this group of actual miscreants.

This magazine has been my life for 4 years now and has taught me everything I know about what it means to be a part of a creative community. It has shown me how very important a club like Nonsense is to Hofstra University. This place needs people like these to investigate what actually is going on here. Are you all aware that there is actually something called a “master plan” in place by the administration?? I’m not kidding about that and you can read about it in an upcoming issue of this magazine.

But seriously you guys, I am very sad to let this thing go. We made many mistakes and just as many accomplishments together these past few years. I didn’t get to do everything I wanted to for this magazine in the time I was editor but there was and is still so much work to be done in order to make this thing excellent. Thank you to all of you reading this right now, and thank you to the people who are hate-reading this because our haters are most certainly our motivators. I love you all. Bernie Sanders 2016.